


Show Me Your Teeth

by ifeelbetter



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, alternative universe - dentist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:00:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony may or may not have gotten into a race to see whether he can extract 100 teeth before Dr. Rogers. All he wanted was a better parking space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show Me Your Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt by [castillon02](http://castillon02.tumblr.com/) in which she literally asked for "Avengers, competitive dentistry." This may be the silliest thing I have written since Inception and kittens.

“The thing is,” Tony said, trying to get Clint’s attention away from the Angry Birds he was playing on his phone, “ _the thing is_ that I won’t win unless I actually see the patients.”

“Hmm,” said Clint in what Clint obviously thought was an engaged-oh-yes-please-do-go-on tone but which everyone who had spent more than three seconds with Clint knew was more of a I-am-bored-with-you-and-your-tiny-dentistry-practice-and-your-face-is-also-particularly-boring tone. Tony took special offense because his face, hello.

“No, really,” Tony insisted, swiveling Clint’s chair around to face him. “You’re actually going to have to schedule appointments. Answer the phones. Sign people in. These are things that are going to have to happen.”

“Sure, fine,” Clint said, rolling his eyes. “That’s what I do anyway.”

“You’re saying that and yet I can see that you’re playing with yourself—”

“Hey!”

“—and I have no one waiting for me to remove their teeth.”

Clint shrugged. “I’m thinking that says more about you than it does about me.”

Tony glared.

Clint didn’t bother to look up.

Tony grabbed his phone and ran away as fast as he could. “Get me patients!” he shouted as he fled.

Clint still managed to hit him in the back of the head with a spitball from, like, three hundred feet though. His aim, it was _deadly_.

***

It had started with a simple, mature debate about parking spaces.

No, that was a lie. It had started with Tony parking in some Dr. Rogers’s spot because (a) it was a better spot and, thusly, should be Tony’s and (b) this was as good a time as any to make good on his promise to Pepper—made over one of those awkward lunch-dates with exes where you both much sadly on salad and she gets that gloomy air that means Tony has disappointed her again and then he’s promising her something absurd—to socialize with his peers more. Two birds, one stone.

Only then Dr. Rogers had turned out to be built like a tractor with only a quarter of the humor—and tractors have no humor to them at all—and there had been angry words exchanged while Dr. Rogers went adorably red in the face and Tony—

—may have started some sort of competitive race to extract a hundred teeth first.

Clint, Tony’s personal receptionist, was also the worst receptionist ever (which was normally why Tony loved him) and so Tony was down by three teeth. He knew for a fact that Dr. Rogers catered to little old ladies who were considering dentures. Tony’s clientele tended towards his dad’s circle, people his dad had sent to him with an eye-roll at Tony’s eccentricity and a “boys will be boys” comment. People who wanted their teeth whitened, straightened, and perfected. Not people who wanted to remove their entire sets of teeth.

Why couldn’t Tony have rambled himself into competitive teeth whitening?

***

Clint stuck three post-it notes on Tony’s forehead while he was washing his hands later.

“This is because I always go for the underdog,” Clint explained. “They’re friends from the force.” Tony blinked. Clint rolled his eyes. “They get _hit in the mouth a lot_ , Tony. They’re gonna need to have some teeth pulled and shit.”

“I take back the thing I said about you being the worst receptionist in the whole world,” Tony said, hugging Clint with his elbows so he didn’t get his hands contaminated.

“You never said anything about me being the worst receptionist in the whole world.”

“No, but I definitely thought it.”

Clint sighed the sigh of the long suffering.

***

By the end of the month, Tony was at 56 and a half teeth successfully pulled.

Darcy, Dr. Rogers’s receptionist, came by the office every Friday afternoon to flirt with Clint. Tony bothered them until she caved and told him Dr. Rogers’s score.

62.

_Damn._

“Chin up, nobody beats Steve,” Darcy said. “He used to fight off bullies in back allies. He just sticks out his little chin and, _boom_. End of story. He’s that stubborn.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said, temporarily distracted by the idea of Dr. Roger’s ‘little chin,’ “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

***

Tony tried calling Pepper.

He opened with: “You ever considered dentures?”

“I am giving you two minutes to ramble and then I am hanging up,” she said, the sound of typing coming to a sudden stop in the background.

“I need to remove 26 more teeth in, like, two days, Pep,” Tony said, flipping his desk calendar just to make sure. At the rate he was going, Dr. Rogers was gonna be done by the end of the week and where would Tony park his Cadillac then? “It’s a matter of life or death. Of my car. Life or death of my car.”

“I changed my mind. I’m hanging up now.”

She hung up.

***

Dr. Rogers was in the waiting room when Tony came out to bug Clint two days later. He looked massive in the silly plush seats, especially holding the People magazine from at least five years ago in his giant hands. What was he, like, secretly a GQ model?

“Dr. Stark,” he said, standing in what looked like rigid attention.

“Dr. Rogers,” Tony said, lounging against the partition because he liked to be contrary.

“I understand that you think we have a bet going,” Dr. Rogers began.

“Ha!” Tony shouted, pointing. “That’s where you’re wrong!”

“…you _don’t_ think we have a bet going?” Dr. Rogers re-phrased, his brow wrinkling.

“No, I don’t _think_ it,” Tony said triumphantly. “I _know_ it.”

“We really don’t.”

Tony scoffed.

“No, we actually don’t,” Dr. Rogers insisted. “Look, I don’t care if you’ve removed a hundred teeth or whatever—”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t.” He hadn’t, but Dr. Rogers didn’t need to know that.

“Either way, I’m keeping my spot because it’s mine and you already have one,” Dr. Rogers said and, shit, Darcy was right about that little chin thing, there it was.

“So you’re conceding,” Tony said because he was a terrible shit, everyone knew this.

“I’m not giving you my spot.”

“But you’re withdrawing because you’re scared I would have beaten you.”

“I’m not—” Dr. Rogers stopped and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Look, can we talk about this in a civilized way over lunch?”

“I’m not—wait, what?”

“Can I just take you to lunch?” Dr. Rogers repeated, taking a step closer to Tony. “And can we be civilized?”

“Well, you can take me to lunch, but that’s all I’m promising,” Tony said and, seriously, where had this conversation gone? It had flown right over his head.

“Good,” said Dr. Rogers. “I’ll be back at noon.”

“…ok?” Tony said, still perplexed.

***

Clint high-fived him when he went back behind the partition.

And he wolf whistled when they left later.


End file.
